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Planar History Files: A rear assault?
P&A since Round 1
Since their arrival into Letara, P&A hadn’t done much, content with their biggest success being in their support of the new racetrack at Lerance, and a tightening of Letara’s safety rules. However, they weren’t standing still in their home country of Australia, and they certainly wouldn’t stand still in Letara, even if they had a reputation to uphold.
In terms of the company itself, it was doing surprisingly well. Even with markets like Letara not exactly being a big cash cow yet, they were performing well enough at home that not only were there multiple partnerships being made for engine development, but in 1959 they even bought their longtime chassis supplier, the (at the time) ailing Halvson, to finally start developing their own chassis.
1955 P&A Paceman
Lore and pictures
In Australia, the 1955 Paceman was envisaged as a VW killer, complete with the assumption that being rear-engined was the reason people were flocking to the Beetle. In Letara, however, P&A was playing at being a more premium brand, so they instead only brought over the high-end models, and marketed it as “The Benetsch that isn’t a Benetsch”.
At the back of the car was its heart, the Rotomax RX40 engine, developed specifically for the Paceman. A 2 litre SOHC flat four, it was the most advanced engine Rotomax had ever made, and made 58kW (77hp), which was more than enough for the Paceman and its conservative top speeds. While there was going to be a more powerful six cylinder, it ruined the Paceman’s handling so was dropped for this car, so it and the RX series would end up living on for quite a while.
The interior was both spartan and lush, with the higher end models even featuring a luxury interior and a 2 speed automatic! P&A’s engineers really didn’t want to squander any comfort, so it had the relatively unique feature of having two different air blower systems. One up front, running air through a radiator to cool it a bit and essentially working as basic aircon, and a heater core up back with the engine. The engineers even went out of their way to ensure that every car had some form of a boot, even if it wasn’t massive in the sedans.
The car wasn’t exactly cheap though, which could’ve been a massive mistake in Letara at the time. With the “base” model (really the entry level premium model in the rest of the world) starting at a whopping $21,750 AMU after tax, and the top of the line and wagon models seen here going for around $26,000 AMU!
1959 P&A Raceman PR3
Lore and pictures
The P&A Raceman was custom built for Letara’s R1 category, despite its name (which was the result of two previous P&A PRototypes being built before it as an attempt to fit different engines into them). The car had a steel monocoque chassis and fibre glass panels, both firsts for the company and reasons that it had such a tough development.
The finished car had highly developed aerodynamics for the time, squeezing as much from the series’ allowable budget as possible. The two fins on its back are one of its defining features, with the engineers supposedly adding them to the design after seeing the Jaguar D-type, but keeping them after their wind tunnel testing showed that it performed better with them (OOC: they’re functionally useless don’t worry, this is just fluff because I managed to fit +8 aerodynamics into this lmao).
The other defining feature was the massive Perspex intake scoop, made so that the engine can suck in as much air as possible without significantly obstructing the driver’s view. The engine was something special, too. A prototype of the flat 6 P&A and Lyons were jointly developing, the 2.5L DOHC monster was a far cry from the engine that would eventually see release in the mid 60’s. The 156 kW in a tiny 870kg car were more than enough for it to tear around Lerance Raceway in a respectable time, but the worry was that the reliability wouldn’t keep up with it.
